How We Falter and the Lessons We Learn

The writer shares his observations on common sense in engineering citing examples of an engineer who used reed mats for concrete forms; a senior building engineer who ventured advice outside his field and advocated partition wall thinner than the side walls; springs closed by standing a vertical pipe around them (a retired chief engineer of West Bengal occasionally also used a grout pump); a Central Water Irrigation Navigation Commission director accustomed to Punjab weirs who suggested founding a weir in Kakrapara on sand instead of on trap rock but when more fully informed magnanimously retracted; two levelers who wrangled over the second place of a decimal yet blundered by a foot in reading; and lest the river may not divert, an engineer who time and again insisted on removal of an island (but the current eroded the island and the river diverted). Additionally, the necessity of checking is highlighted by three discrepancies in design of a water‐supply scheme (high overhead tanks, excessive capacity of underground reservoirs, and narrow spacing between tube wells) and an instance of foreigners employed after independence who became disillusioned (an American making impractical suggestions for lifting road‐bridge monoliths and spilling water over concrete tiles across an earth dam had to quit).